Our brains can process 10 million bits of information every second… but we only use 50 bits for conscious thought.

Back when humans lived in caves, this helped us conserve energy – yet our brains still work the same way today. We’re hardwired for inattention and passivity. And since most of our thinking is unconscious, so too is our decision making.

Here are three sensitives we’re often completely unaware of: group dynamics (we like to fit in), loss aversion (much more powerful than the prospect of gains), and a bias towards the present (we’re more likely to choose a small payoff now versus a larger one later).

When scientist Bob Nease studied “decision analysis” at Stanford, he found that people focus their “50 bits” on things that are immediately pressing or pleasurable – leaving everything else on the backburner. This cognitive divide has huge implications for consumer behavior.

Most people in the behavior-change business (whether it’s managers or salespeople) operate on a faulty assumption: bad behaviors are the product of bad intentions, so if we just change someone’s mind, we can change their behavior. This couldn’t be more wrong…

Non-adherence is mostly unintentional. Nobody wakes up and says, “I want to be fat” or “I want to make a mistake”. Being unaware of everything that’s going into our brains means that optimal preferences are rarely reflected in our actions.

Autopilot is our default setting. This is why customer surveys aren’t that effective. People can only reveal the “50 bits” of their conscious experience. The bigger picture of what impacts their behavior won’t be mentioned because it’s simply not on their mind.

Bob Nease’s “50 bits” approach is all about finding subtle strategies to turn pre-existing good intentions into positive results. Why is this important? Because the standard approach of inferring what people want based on their actual behavior is a fool’s game.

Trying to market intentions that your customer already has is like preaching to the converted. Nobody needs to be persuaded to be healthy or to manage their time better – that desire is a given. It’s just a question of how it can be activated.

Nease came up with several key strategies to help bridge that gap between intention and behavior. In Part 2, we’ll break them down as simply as possible...